Saturday, July 28, 2012

“I dropped the soap a couple of times but, hey — I’m not complaining. What can I do for you, Danny?”

“How do you fancy resurrecting Ziggy Stardust for the Olympic opening ceremony?”

“I get to wear the loony clothes again? And paint a zesty space crumpet on my forehead?”

“Indeed. You’ll be frozen in a block of ice and rescued by thirty foot mammoths against an ever-changing tableaux of disabled kids on tricycles recreating the Wars of the Roses with inflatable bottles of Newcastle Brown and twirly swords cast from the lyrics of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Tarkus. As the mammoths morph into Highland cattle, quintessentially British cheeses will roll out from a funnel in the shape of Geri Halliwell’s lips and pound against the assembled Martian Spiders, beating out a rhythm perfect for underscoring—”

“Wait a sec, Danny. Can I stop you there?”

“You won’t do it?”

“I’m fine. It’s just the other guys in the band...Ronno in particular...they’re all allergic to Highland cattle.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah. Made it a nightmare touring Scotland.”

“They won’t be real Highland cattle, just fibreglass replicas. I see them somersaulting from the split carcasses of the mammoths and leaping onto pogo sticks as the band join you on your luminous Jackanory carousel.”

“He was Trev’s dentist in the late 60s, dead now. Famously unmusical, though if you check out Trev’s wisdom teeth you’ll see what a great dentist he was. Maybe you could go with sheep?”

“No — we need the sheep for when Freddie Mercury’s ghost is knitted from the wool of 10,000 Arran sweaters.”

“What if I go solo? Would that help?”

“The Spiders are integral to the whole melting ice cum Tolkien flotilla teapot party section. It’s set to Holst’s Planets, with you lot supporting the synchronised dalek Morris Men during the Martian cycle between the Earth-themed gladiatorial JVC tractors and the Venusian drop dead Essex girl stunna pageant in the conjoined Melton Mowbray pork pie dirigibles.”

“Maybe we could use actors. I know for a fact that Dennis Waterman’s free at the moment. He could play Ronno to a T.”

“Hang on — I’ve got it! What if we blindfold the band? If they can’t see the horns, they can’t scratch, get the runs, or mistakenly believe themselves to be dentists from forty years ago! Blindfolds it is — designed to complement the Ronnie Barker spectacles doing a Mordor over the whole stadium.”

“That it?”

“In the bag, yes.”

“So when’s the ceremony? When do you need me?”

“July 27th, for an all-singing, all-dancing bonkers British spectacular guaranteed to enrage certain sections of the right-wing press.”

“The 27th? No...no, that’s no good. I’m taking Iman out for a curry.”

“What?”

“We do it every year. It’s a romance thing.”

“Think of the kudos.”

“Think of the bruises the size of frying pans to back, legs, chest, face, feet.”

“Hmmm. Okay...okay...but I still need the band, blindfolded. We can keep them, and substitute you. I see horses, now, and Hansom cabs, and the girls of St Winnifred’s School Choir forming a human Billy Bunter pyramid, tossing Walker’s Crisp frisbees as they battle with jigsaw puzzle pieces assembling a mile-high image of Michael Caine weaving Brian May’s hair into beehive with miniature cricket bats. You still there, Dave?”

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Let’s say I wanted to purchase a shed. Or neck insurance or loft insulation or (pushing the boat out a little) anything.

I don’t — but let’s say I did.

The last thing I want under these circumstances, as I’m bombarded by targeted advertising aimed between the bollocks of my assembled profileritude, is any kind of twat (or bunch of twats) whistling at me in a jokesy manner.

Look! Over there! Dangling from a mocked-up aisle in DIY Nirvana, clutching all the handy electrical paraphernalia anyone could ever need, is BOB (it says so on his name badge) — an actor called Alan from Dagenham whose cheery advice to “pop in to Heap-o-Crap RU now” and “sample our unparalleled range of monogrammed spirit levels” is accompanied by the playful whistle of a young Norman Wisdom gadding about an innocent 50s terraced street.

And there! Tinkering at an internet router box like he was stroking a prone Siamese cat is DYLAN, his smiles and winks of reassurance to the young family looking on in wonder mirrored in matesy whistles only a fool could fail to interpret as meaning et voila! The 20GB superhighway to the world whose installation you previously believed would consign you to the loony bin of stress for a thousand years, delivered to your suburban haven of contentment in a trice, ‘sif the Gods themselves had presided over every miracle moment!

And again! The woman from Debts Begone! (Till Next Friday!)!!, tucked away behind her laptop, easy-as-pie-ing the shrillest of ditties from her pursed and lipsticked lips as computer generated cartoon images of your pounds and pence skip towards a restful looking sunset — a sunset that whistles, along with the graphics and the laptop and the desk and your TV, in a nightmare squeal of mock ease and jollity destined to drown the canine ear in a future evolutionary backwater.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Regular visitors to this blog will be aware of its highways and byways, its inroads and outroads, its nooks and crannies and fluffy-yet-dangerous underside.

I know that for some of you, it has become like a well-trained pet, leaping post by post through the hoops of your clickety-mousety fingertips like a seal with a ball on its nose a-flip on a floating mattress of dolphins.

But now, all is about to change.

Over the next few weeks you will see a number of improvements to the architecture of the site. Workmen may be afoot with their butt cracks, so beware. In the main, these changes have been prompted by reports of spamming from the comments trail, along with naked bathing in the Icon Signifying Nothing area. If, over the next few weeks, you receive any spam or encounter the bodies of virgin octogenarian nymphs paddling close to the foot of the blog, do please alert me via the email address on my contact page.

Meanwhile, the changes to look out for are as follows:

Dial-a-Grunt

The current telephone call-back system will no longer be streamed live. Instead, callers will receive their miscellaneous animal grunt as an mp3 file by email at the reduced rate of 29p per minute.

The Fish List

Sadly, the much-used fish list will now disappear from the site. For many years I have been engaged in a legal battle with the UK Fisheries & Performing Plankton Council over ownership of sections P to S of the list. A court ruling in their favour regarding pollock now means that unless I am prepared to pay a £65,000 “fish handle” ownership licence fee, I am no longer entitled to maintain a database of facts about this particular aquatic phenomenon. After careful consideration, I have concluded that any fish list devoid of essential species such as the pollock is no fish list of mine and as a consequence I will no longer have anything to do with it, thank you very much.

The And Widget

The popular And Widget will now move to a more prominent place on the blog — possibly the end of my nose on my profile photo. Over the years, those of you interested in counting the number of ANDs on the site have clicked on this widget an astonishing 112,645 times, making it the internet’s 1,428,286th most clicked-on widget! In addition, this widget will now feature a sponsored link. For every click you make, 0.05p will find its way into the coffers of &Aid, the international charity organisation for sufferers of conjunctivitis.

Whack-A-Penis

A number of small changes to this sidebar game are listed below:

1) Stars will now be awarded every six penises to help players who grew up prior to the decimalisation of the pound formulate a more reliable assessment of their capabilities.2) The “Augh!” and “Wauuugh!” sound effects will be combined into a single “Aughwuuugh!” and accompanied by an ‘evil gnome’ style titter.3) The boss penis is no longer immune to the Triple Whammy Smash Attack.4) Whacking three penises in a single row or column no longer springs The Vengeful Policeman & his Brigade of Easily Excitable Constables.5) New skins for the game will be available at 1,000,000 and 1,250,000 points, including Cool Azure, Batman, and Scrotal Ripple.

The Concubine Zealot’s Astrocast

The typo on the Yang button of this popular oracle has now been rectified (though Scorpios born between 1967 and 1971 may still experience momentary lag on the heavenly alignment visuals).

Pant Check Alert

The flashing strobe effect will be replaced by a warning pop-up, granting you an extra 15 seconds to ensure you’re wearing underwear suitable for viewing the blog before the gateway to Pant Crime Zapper Nirvana opens and you are strafed by thong-friendly alien SWAT teams intent on ridding the universe of substandard gussetry.

If any of this sounds unfamiliar, that’ll teach you for checking in with Google reader and missing all the fun...